


it hurts like hell to be torn apart

by karnsteins



Series: the descent [6]
Category: The Outsiders - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28377570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karnsteins/pseuds/karnsteins
Summary: The cold he feels now is bone deep, not soul deep.Ponyboy has to cope with losing Dallas, for the second time.
Relationships: Ponyboy Curtis/Dallas Winston
Series: the descent [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1911538
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	1. the space you used to fill is now this great black hole

Cold seeps into his bones, bears him out. He has known cold before: Decembers spent in a barely warmed house, days walking with his brothers and friends, the taste of it on his tongue on a hot summers day, and the feeling of a dead friend come back to life, animating his body bit by it, telling him that he was there, and not alone. 

The cold he feels now is bone deep, not soul deep. He feels it sink into his skin in a way that doesn't feel like the comfort he had felt weeks, months before. That cold had felt so menacing at first, until he understood it, understood who it brought with it, who he had missed so, so deep inside of himself. 

He doesn't like this. He wants it deeper, wants it driving into him so badly that he might freeze from the inside out. 

He calls again, for him. Calls his name, shouts it as far as he can into the landscape, begging, pleading for him to come back. 

The cold travels down his throat, locks up his words. He still screams, wordless, desperate until he finds himself flailing. There's a cracking sound, and then he's slipping downward. The cold is no longer simply air: it is water, seeping into him all at once, up his nose, down his throat. He thinks that he feels hands pinning him down, flailing. 

Someone says, _You should wash the grease out of your hair_.

Panic builds in him, wild and unrestrained. He's going to die. He's going to die here, he's going to drown, he's going to—

A wet gasp leaves him as he wakes up, arms flailing in his bed. Ponyboy falls out of his bed, gags and chokes, can barely get himself off of the floor in time to vomit violently in the toilet. His body heaves, stomach almost folding in on itself from the force of it all, the tears coming down his cheeks in salty tracks of desperation. 

By the time he's done, he's shaking, palms coming to press themselves against his eyes, choking out, "Dallas — Dal, you've gotta come back. Please. _Please_."

He receives the same answers he's gotten for weeks now: utter silence. There's only a yawning emptiness there whenever he calls out for Dallas now. No presence beside him, no sneer to look forward to, no sudden ripple of chill down his back to let him know that Dallas was there. 

Only old nightmares mixed with new ones, rising to claw up at him over and over again. 

The only bright spot is that his brothers weren't here to see this, to know. It is the smallest mercy, and Ponyboy takes it, unable to control the loneliness in him now that seemed so much more permanent than it did before. 

Logically, he knows he shouldn't feel this bad. There had been no thought of an afterlife, of a possibility of more. 

Now? It wasn't like that. It feels worse than the first time Dallas died. It feels so, so much worse as Ponyboy has to suddenly live with the emptiness of it all, of the suddenly finality of it all simply left a hole in him that he didn't know could be dug. Dallas coming back had given him something precious he didn't know he had lost: hope, a sense of a future. That even with Dallas dead, a specter in Ponyboy's life, having him there even as a ghost still gave something of a life to Dallas, still gave a window into more even if it was limited. 

And now… 

Now he had to figure out what to do, how to go on. 

Even if he didn't want to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back, guys! hope you had a restful holiday, and please comments, kudos, holler at me over on tumblr, i'm @madeleinepryor.


	2. you're out of sight but not out of mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The comfort that Dallas' jacket brought seems absent it's usual warmth as Ponyboy trudges through the hall.

The comfort that Dallas' jacket brought seems absent it's usual warmth as Ponyboy trudges through the hall. There are only a few days left in the semester, with less than usual for him. He doesn't much care for it; he feels worn out by it all. 

Even if Dallas had been there, the holidays have been hard since his parents died, and harder once Johnny and Dallas both had died. The first Christmas he'd had at fourteen, all four of them had been gone, and it had been hard to even acknowledge it in the house. Two years on, and while the situation for his brothers and his friends hadn't changed, well.

For Ponyboy, it was going to be agony in an entirely different way.

Without Dallas there, it's harder than ever to make it through days. Before, having Dallas even in the more embarrassing moments of every day life made it all easier to work through from those little moments where Dallas had remembered where Ponyboy had placed an assignment to when he'd been able to do something like the sink, able to move Ponyboy's hands on his own, get him walking even through a day where it felt as if Ponyboy was a visitor in his own body. 

He hardly registers his classes, he forgets half of his assignments in his locker, and even hardly takes notice of the Soc kids that pass him. He's only mildly aware of James, the Soc that Dallas had touched in defense of him months back, was now in school again, wary of Ponyboy. 

What did it matter? Why did he _care?_

The Kools he smokes on the way out of school don't have their usual flavor. They don't make the hole in his chest any smaller, they don't make the new feeling of grief in his chest any smaller, they don't even really remind him of Dallas anymore. 

They simply taste like cigarettes he's grown accustomed to in flavor. 

Resentment, anger, and loss builds up in him as he goes through the motions of the day. He goes to the DX for lunch and hardly speaks to Soda. He goes back to school, does his assignments half heartedly, and when he's dismissed for the rest of the holiday, there's none of the usual relief or excitement as he sets about the rest of the day, no real pleasure in it. 

Ponyboy just wants to sleep. He wants to take some relief, to not have his body be his anymore, to not have to navigate around a new kind of loss that he didn't even know existed before. Even eating with his brothers seems hollow, and when he finally hits the bed, he's grateful for it, to be pulled into sleep. 

He's not pulled down into a vast nothingness. Instead, he's pulled into the memory of it all, of having to watch Dallas die again. He can see the bullets spitting fire into the night, he can see them hit Dallas' body one after the other. The streetlights illuminating his hair so brightly, the way his eyes widened, and the last gasps, wet and horrific as he breathed out Ponyboy's name for the last time. He's helpless in his dreams as he was in reality to stop it, and in dreams he can't even call out Dallas' name. 

He collapses like he did then, only this time he opens his eyes in his bed. He doesn't gasp or cry, Soda's arms clutched tightly around him. He's just left, staring at the ceiling, seeing, hearing Dallas gasp his name, seeing his body fall over and over and over again. 

The more he thinks about it, the more he remembers it, the angrier he gets, the more desperate he gets. The weeks that have played out, with Dallas beside him, Dallas _within_ him, something that Ponyboy has tried so hard not to think about, to conceptualize fall beside it. How he had felt so much more, so less lonely, as if a piece of him had come back home. 

Ponyboy is so tired. Two years without Dallas had been empty and weeks of him back, even if it wasn't in a normal way, had already felt changed for the better. Everything wasn't perfect, no, but it had been better than what had been, the loss. 

There was no going back to this loss. He didn't want to make it permanent again, didn't want to have to live without Dallas again. 

He had come back to Ponyboy however briefly. So there had to be a way, he decides, to bring him right back again. Even if it wasn't the same way those stupid kids had done it, there had to be a way to pull Dallas back to him. 

In the dark, Soda breathing beside him, he decides that he'll do it. He'll do anything and everything in his power to bring Dallas back to him. 

In the bed he turns, wraps his arms tight around Soda. He'd do it. Even if he didn't quite know where or how to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! comments and/or kudos appreciated and i'm over at tumblr @madeleinepryor!


	3. wherever you go, i take a little piece of you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darry always told him to use his head, retrace his steps. Thinking with his head, for normal things hasn't ever been Ponyboy's strong suit. They've always known that, he's always been trying to do it and hasn't ever been very good at it.

Darry always told him to use his head, retrace his steps. Thinking with his head, for normal things hasn't ever been Ponyboy's strong suit. They've always known that, he's always been trying to do it and hasn't ever been very good at it. 

Problems that Ponyboy could solve tended to be emotional. He couldn't always understand the logic of a math problem, but an emotional one, he could do it, break it down with his head. As he thinks about Dallas, about Dallas haunting him, he begins to wonder if Dallas coming back to him wasn't a logical problem so much as it was an _emotional_ one. 

Though he doesn't need to go back to school for the last few days, he goes back one more time. He doesn't check out books, he sneaks them out, the dimestore novels, the thick books about ghosts that he'd dismissed out of hand weeks before. They still weren't academic; they felt silly even between his fingers as he reads them on and off as the snow begins to pile outside, and he spends more time at home rather than hanging out with anyone else. 

Whenever he's asked, he tells them that he's working on an assignment. He hates that he's still lying, that he has to still do this. 

The rest of him, however, is determined. He _needs_ to untangle this, needs to find a way, any way to get Dallas back. 

He picks at it, at the memories. Dallas dying. The morgue. The funeral. The burial. Two years of nothing. The kids, and then… 

Ponyboy takes a drag from the Kools he has, always circling everything after. He'd been distracted, wrapped up in Dallas since he'd come back, since that first little scare. Everything that had happened since he'd first shown up felt entirely unreal in it's recollection. 

Still, he pries. Pulls at the threads, from the ouija board the kids had to when he'd been sick, feeling that unique, slick cold on and in him. 

Buying a ouija board was simply not in the picture. From the money to even _finding_ one was impossible, especially if he were only to use it once. It was a toy, as far as he thought, and not one worth trying to steal or spend money on. Nothing he considered with it felt legitimate or worth the risk. If it _was_ real, it would make sense that Johnny would have come back, too. 

Johnny had been in pain. Johnny had been the one who seemed more desperate to live out of the two of them, despite his letter. 

It had to be something else for Dallas. 

After awhile, it seems like he's running in circles, simply hurting himself or too distracted by other things. He puts the books down and decides that he can turn his attention to other things for the moment, even if those other things aren't that pleasant either, as Christmas begins to creep closer and closer. 

It's hard to celebrate Christmas. It used to be his favorite time of the year, able to invite Johnny inside for longer stretches than usual, able to have a bit of Christmas tree when they could, exchanging simple presents. Three years on and there wasn't much expectation between them except that they'd all be home together, no arguments between any of them, and any greaser who wanted to come in, could come in. 

This year at least there wasn't a reason to have an argument, at least on Ponyboy's end. Everything for college had already been sent off, his grades were fine, and as far as he could make it, things had been quiet. Ever since Soda had run off, they'd been trying to work on things for the better, trying to make sure that they could work things out. 

Had it been perfect? Not necessarily. There had been a huge argument in the previous spring when he'd been messing up in class or two, enough that Ponyboy had been the one to leave the house again, had gone running into the night like he had years before — only there wasn't Darry hitting him that had done it. 

That time, Darry had run after him, and it had been hard, really hard to let everything out again. 

And it hadn't happened since. 

About the only thing that Ponyboy could hope for in the coming days was that he could appear normal. He could feel normal, the way he had before Dallas had come back. He could pretend to be that Ponyboy again, if only for a little while. 

Or, he could try. 

Even with Dallas unable to be at the edge of his sight again, even without the feeling of cold seeping in him, Ponyboy feels as if there is a piece of Dallas with him. A piece of him, still there that he's desperately trying to grasp onto, to try and tug Dallas back to him at any cost, for any reason. 

The only evidence, beside his own memory are dreams. Before Dallas, the night terrors had come and gone; with Dallas, it had been a mixture of dreams and memories. Now, he was lucky if he had a dream at all, and what he had, he could only remember in spurts of color and sound, some of them glimpses of memories some of them without sense. Sometimes, they were of that apartment in New York that he knew belonged to Dallas' mother; sometimes, they were of the night Dallas died whether it was Ponyboy seeing his body hit the ground, of Dallas reaching out to him with his name on his lips or of Dallas, looking up at Ponyboy's frozen, anguished face. 

The world hadn't seemed real then. It hadn't seemed true, Johnny dying hadn't seemed real in the moment, still hadn't landed in him correctly yet Dallas' had. It had fallen into him, thudded in with cold reality that Johnny's death hadn't done yet.

The dreams, Dallas' haunting all seem to tip the world back on it's head: Johnny's death real, Dallas' own the piece of unreality, tearing at the seams. The one that occurs Christmas morning almost feels more of the same unreality: he's back in Dallas' shoes now. He's gripping the phone, dialing as best he can. There's blood still on his mouth, his reflection distorted, awful. 

Johnny's dead. Dallas accepted Johnny was dead, and he hated it. His mouth is mumbling out the words to Darry, the sound of the cops starting to grow. There's a racing thought to take Two-Bit's switchblade with him, but as the sirens grow louder, as Darry gives confirmation over the line he hangs it up. The switchblade stays there, leaning against the booth, and Dallas takes off. 

He has to make it. He has to make it to the house.

His feet strike the pavement, hard, the sound loud. One after the other, his breath in his ears, his heart pounding louder and louder as if it understood it was on a time limit. 

Ponyboy feels his heart beating with his as he runs into night. Can feel his anguish, his rage, can feel Dallas' thoughts come in inelegant circles of emotion, each turn making it worse, each thought rattling furiously in his mind. What was going to happen next? Was he going to see Darry lose his brothers? Was he going to see Steve's father finally kick him out for good or kill him? Two-Bit never crawling out of a drink? Was he going to have to watch Ponyboy end up like Johnny one day, too kind, too compassionate for his own good, die like that? One moment, where he wasn't there, and he'd be like Johnny, dying with a broken back over kids who didn't even deserve it? 

No. No, no, no.

He raises the gun, as determined as he was now as he was a ten years old, being put in jail for the first time in his life. He wants to die before he wants to see _that_ happen. He doesn't want to see Ponyboy dead like that, doesn't want to live in a world where it could happen. 

Explosions near his stomach. His chest. Blood, spilling out on his front, coming from his mouth. Satisfaction blooms in his face. His body falling, falling.

Looking up. The last thing he sees is Ponyboy's anguished bruised face. 

He reaches up toward him, reaches, begging--

The sound of a door slamming knocks him clear out of the dream. He's gasping for breath against a cold pillow, and the sound of Soda walking around the house replaces the sound of gunfire. His hand curls around his abdomen, seeking blood and only coming up with fabric. Sweat pours down his face, his heart keeps pounding and pounding. Ponyboy shakes, waits for his brother to leave. Once the door shuts again, he's alone.

He buries his face into his pillow and screams and screams and screams. Screams out the anger, the frustration, the loneliness. Screams until he realizes that he's crying, and he doesn't want to cry anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! love comments, kudos, and you can always hit me up over at @madeleinepryor on tumblr. one more chapter to go -- and then a few weeks before the next part.


	4. it hurts like hell to be torn apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas is spent in a quiet affair between them all.

Christmas is spent in a quiet affair between them all. There's a meal, there's an exchange of presents. There is loss between them all, deeper than their parents. Ponyboy feels like this year more than ever, he is going through the motions even if he wishes for more. This is the last year before college, the last time, and yet his mind isn't at the table or the presents or the warmth before him. 

When they sit in front of the television set, with Soda's arm around his shoulders, with Darry on the other side of them both, he's not thinking of what's on the screen. He's thinking of the first time he saw Dallas materialize before him here. When he'd been sick and sweaty, when Dallas flickered before him with that disembodied voice. 

He's retracing his steps, thinking about the time before then. What he had done, what it had been like before Dallas had shown up. Thinking of the ouija board, of the cemetery. 

Trying to pull himself out of his own head only makes him feel… angry. He feels something burning in his gut, in his very being. Focusing on his brothers feels urgent, imperative. On Darry being with him on one side, of Soda being on the other side. No one arguing, no one pulling. Everyone here and now, and Ponyboy feels angry and bereft. 

The grief he feels is different now, so different. If Dallas were here, if Dallas was with him, he could concentrate better, he could feel at ease. Instead without him…

His fingers hold on tighter to Soda's arm. He tries his best to be the little brother they need in the moment, that he needs for himself. 

Yet, he goes to bed thinking about Dallas again. Dreaming as Dallas, the switchblade in his hand. Bleeding already, feet hitting the pavement one at a time, desperate and violent and thinking about _Ponyboy_ as the bullets ripped through his body. 

This time, he wakes up, has to get from under Soda's heavy (breathing, still breathing) body. This time he puts his shoes on, throws on Dallas' jacket after avoiding it for so long, and gets out of the house. He lets his legs pump for him, running through the streets, trying not to lash out (at who, at what, _how_ ), trying to do anything, everything to distract. 

Except it's a bad idea. His legs are taking him down the road at a breakneck speed. The cold doesn't feel real to him as he runs, it doesn't feel like something to even care about when he's experienced it the way he has with Dallas. His legs are moving and moving and he's just ending where the dreams were taking him: to the phone booth. His legs are hurting when he finally slows to a stop, looking at the phone booth before him. 

His hand shakes as the memory comes to him: Dallas' forearm bandaged up, with the scar; the desperation on his face, the switchblade, the blood—

Ponyboy feels cold and clammy even as anger starts to rise back in him, anger that didn't even feel as if it belonged to him. The urge to take up the phone, to hit the damn thing against it grows, to try and destroy the stupid fucking thing—

His hand is reaching out for it. The receiver is cold against his skin. He flexes his fingers against it; it's shocking how cold it is. How cold everything seems for a moment, even as the memory slices it's way through his mind, of picking up the phone, desperately dialing his home phone number. 

Ponyboy lets go of the phone. Breathes in. 

The jacket seems heavy on his shoulders. He thinks he can smell the old smoke on it. He turns on his heel, and this time, he half walks, half jogs to the house. 

He tells no one of what he's done. When he gets home, he almost takes off the jacket until the thought occurs to him that before Dallas had shown up, he'd been wearing it for days and weeks on end. 

Ponyboy grasps the sleeve, takes it off slowly. For all the warmth that he hadn't had for weeks with it now, it occurs to him that during the run it had been different. He hadn't gotten over heated. He hadn't felt a if he wanted to peel off the jacket.

It fit _perfectly_ like it had before. 

Ponyboy pants, eyes focused on the brown leather now, fingers clenching the material. There had to be more to it than that. There had to be; he'd worn the jacket for years now, on and off. And yet…

His legs burn in protest from the run. His hair feels longer than usual, sticking to his forehead. His fingers flex and unflex on the jacket, and Ponyboy rubs his thumb on it, mind working. Of course it didn't make sense before, some stupid kids weren't messing with Dallas' grave before this, not that he knew of. 

Now, they had. He'd been wearing the jacket when the cold came. He'd been wearing the ring too, had smoked the old Kools…

"Fuck," Ponyboy mutters. The St. Christopher pendant, too. He'd been wearing it, letting it become like a second skin on him to the point he'd forgotten about it until he'd struck a match against it. He reached up for it now on his chest, the wheels turning now, furiously. Grips it tighter, as if the saint on it could imprint himself on Ponyboy's skin. 

In an instant he stands up, goes to his room. He pulls open the drawer, and the skull ring is there, glinting almost grinning menacingly at him from where he had put it weeks ago. Ponyboy reaches for it; besides the pendant, it had been what Dallas had worn when he had died. 

He considers it in the light, heart slower in his ears than it had been before. 

Ponyboy reaches for it, pulls his fingers away only for a moment — only a moment to consider that this wouldn't work, that maybe it was insane to try and do this — and then the thought of having to be without Dallas for any longer makes his guts twist. 

He grabs it, slips it on his finger on his right hand. It feels cold, heavy on his finger. 

Yet, with the jacket on, with the ring, with the pedant, thoughts focused towards him, Dallas never shows up. The cold that Dallas brings, it never comes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! love comments, kudos, and you can always hit me up over at @madeleinepryor on tumblr. the next part will be up in april, so see you then!


End file.
